Dolores Maryam (The Dolorosa)
Personality Dolores gives off an immediate, motherly vibe to most people who encounter her. It can be confusing to some, given her apparent young age, but almost every action she undertakes is one meant to shelter or guide, offering understanding and patience to anyone she feels requires it. She has a gentle manner, and if someone has need of a nurturing influence in their life she is very willing to step into that role, supplying reassurance and compassion to those who may not find such things elsewhere. A tactile woman, she gives comfort through unobtrusive physical contact and warm smiles, always ready with a helpful, kind word and is very free with her time, devoting much of it to the people she cares for. It is very possible for people to become irritated with what they might see as her meddling, but she rarely takes such things to heart. She is a cheerful, personable woman, with a ready wit and a good sense of humour (though she will rarely go so far as to openly mock someone), as well as a sweet temper which inspires trust from those around her. Dolores takes everyone she meets at face value and never, at least outwardly, seems to think poorly of anyone. People have their secrets, as does she, and although they may one day trust her enough to reveal them she doesn’t believe that she has a right to know everything about those she considers to be her friends. Discrimination isn’t something that she looks kindly upon, and anyone displaying it in front of her will no doubt be met with a lecture, whether they want to listen or not. However, she does not hold grudges, advocating forgiveness in almost all situations. She is very difficult to offend, and sees anger as something which, if not properly utilised, does little more than rob a person of time they might be spending doing something more worthwhile. One of the traits upon which she prides herself is her honesty, which will be complete so long as it is helpful and sincere. She is certainly not above lying, if it will help more than telling the truth will, but in the long run she would prefer to be truthful and not risk damage by keeping someone in the dark for longer than necessary. Even unpleasant, brutal truths need to be known, it’s simply a matter of finding the best way to reveal them. Despite this inclination towards truthfulness, however, she has been lying about her true age since the beginning of her employment at Hogwarts, feeling it necessary in order to not draw any undue suspicion to herself. Not everything about her is sweetness and sunshine, however. Despite her so often speaking against it, she can be turned to anger if those she loves are threatened. She can hold many people in her heart and will protect them all fiercely, particularly those she views as her family. Being almost twice the age she appears to be certainly doesn’t dim the fire of her temper when it’s roused, and although she will almost invariably feel guilty about her outburst after the fact, she won’t hesitate in the heat of the moment to defend an innocent person from harm. Almost the entire staff, and certainly the entire student body of Hogwarts is subject to this protective instinct, and though some might say she’s overstretching herself, she sees this position as part of her calling in life, a way to redeem herself for the way she failed to save her own son. She enjoys making gifts for people, even if they don’t realise that they mean that much to her, and Christmases and birthdays will often be met with something handmade from her. Knitting, she thinks, is a good way to pass the time between her duties as a nurse at the school and even if the recipient doesn’t like or appreciate what she’s made, she won’t take offence and will just find another use for it. Dolores also has quite a green thumb, and takes to nurturing plants as well as she nurtures people. As a vampire, she can’t ingest food or drink like a mortal would, but she does enjoy the occasional cup of chamomile tea despite it causing a small amount of discomfort – she’s not willing to fully give up on her humanity, and holds out hope that one day there will be a cure for her condition, or in the very least some way to relieve it to allow her and others like her to live a more normal life. Her condition keeps her from spending mealtimes in the Great Hall, not because she doesn’t eat, but because the sound of hundreds of hearts beating all at once is close to maddening. She is, however, a very social creature and will crave company if left in solitude for too long. The doors of the infirmary or her own quarters are always open to anyone who wishes to spend a bit of time with her, or those who just want to talk. While her own life and prospects are now limited by her vampirism – something which she knows will become more of an issue as she ages – she wishes most fervently for the success of her family and those she cares for. She isn’t bitter about the way her life has gone, though she would change it if she could, and instead of seeing her lengthened years as a bad thing, she instead wants to use the time she has to help and guide the lives of as many people as she can. Certainly, she doesn’t relish the idea of watching the ones she loves grow up and die while she endures, but that is something she will need to come to terms with, and she knows this. Dolores has command over herself, inasmuch as she doesn’t feel the need to tear out the throat of every being with a pulse that comes near her. Thanks to a potion that she takes to sate her thirst – though it doesn’t remove the need for blood – it is perfectly safe for her to hug people, and be around them in general. One of the things she fears most, far above her vampirism being exposed to the parents of the students she tends to, is that she will one day lose control and hurt somebody, resulting in her losing her loved ones and everything she has worked so hard to gain. Background Dolores was born on September 8th, 1956, into a Muggle family in Sculthorpe, Norfolk. Both of her parents worked in the medical field – her father as a dentist, and her mother as a midwife. Her birth was planned and she was very much loved as she grew up, attending mainstream school and showing next to no sign of magical tendencies until she reached the age of nine, aside from a few odd events which could be easily explained away. Even as a child she displayed the caring nature that would come to the fore later in her life, having been taught from a young age that everyone was equal no matter what they looked like, or what their circumstances were. She was a fierce protector of the children who found themselves targeted by bullies, and although she occasionally got herself into trouble with how she would leap to the defence of anyone unable or unwilling to defend themselves, she would always be able to explain her actions… even if the explanation wasn’t always satisfactory to the teacher or parents. She had always been surrounded by odd occurrences – things which her parents would blame on their own forgetfulness or put down to coincidence, but Dolores’ first true display of magic appeared when she was nine years old. While running home from school, she fell and cut her elbow. Not deeply, but enough to scare her with the amount of blood that it produced. However, when she arrived home, all that remained was the blood on her hand and arm, with not a single mark to be seen to show where it might have come from. The young girl had never been a liar, but she couldn’t explain what had happened and why there was no longer any cut on her arm. It would be the only time that anything of that particular nature happened, but the strange events that had followed her around for as long as she could remember continued, and she and her parents had no idea of what was causing them until a representative of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry arrived on her doorstep some weeks before the new school term was about to begin. With the explanation that they were given, everything suddenly fell into place, and all of those things which had been building into a problem which was beginning to become frightening were no longer quite as scary. Naturally, they doubted it at first – for what ‘Muggle’ wouldn’t doubt that their child had been blessed with such abilities – but it only took a few small displays of magic and some reassurance to convince them that Hogwarts would be the best place for Dolores to develop her talents. Her parents, as much as they might have tried, were unable to trace where the magical gene may have come from, but they were excited for their daughter to have such new prospects that they could have never dreamed of. Not long after they found out, a local couple came to visit them, offering to take Dolores to Diagon Alley to collect her school supplies and give her a first taster of the Wizarding world. They weren’t very willing to let their child be taken by strangers, so they agreed to an escort, and went along with her to get a glimpse into the world that she would soon be taken into. While they were both stunned and apprehensive, Dolores drank everything in from the moment they stepped out onto the street, becoming separated from her family and their new friends several times as she stopped to look into shop windows or to disappear inside to examine something more closely. Eventually, she calmed, and with a little help managed to find everything that she would need to begin her first year at her new school. The wand that chose her was a supple willow wand with a unicorn hair core, at a length of ten and a half inches. Along with the equipment, she was gifted with a new pet – a small fruit bat which she named Kanny. In the days leading up to her departure, she could barely contain her excitement. All she had been able to tell her friends was that she was being sent to a boarding school, somewhere far away, and although she hated to lie to them and would miss them all terribly, she knew that she couldn’t tell them where she was really going. On September 1st, 1968, one week before her 12th birthday, Dolores boarded the train to Hogwarts with a tearful farewell to her parents and turned her mind towards what the next seven years would bring her. The first view of Hogwarts from the lake during the first years’ boat crossing would be one that would remain with her for the rest of her life. Even on the relatively short train journey she had spoken to many people and had already decided which House she would be most suited for. It didn’t come as too much of a surprise to her when she was sorted into Hufflepuff, and she joined her new classmates feeling pleased with where she had been placed, and the odd conversation she had had with the Hat. Imagine, a talking hat! Dolores would see many more strange things over the course of her education, and would come home with her pockets full of objects and treats that her parents had never seen before, but wondered at as much as she did. She took great pleasure in sharing sweets with them and watching their reactions to the strange flavours or the fact that some of them would even move. A cheerful and friendly young girl she made friends easily, and being the oldest in her year took it upon herself to make sure that everyone else was happy and safe. It was no surprise, then, that she became a prefect, and her parents were pleased to find that despite her ‘unconventional’ schooling, she was still thinking of entering the medical field. At school, Dolores excelled in Herbology, Potions and Charms, and spent a lot of her spare time in the hospital wing, tidying up after the Matron and spending time with the students who didn’t seem to be getting any other visitors. It was here, in her sixth year, where she met the young man who would later become her husband – a Ravenclaw in the year above her who had been injured in a quidditch match. He took a liking to her, and they spent the rest of the year together until his graduation, and then every holiday and Hogsmeade trip the year after until Dolores’ own graduation in 1975. They married the following year and moved into a house near to Dolores’ parents, and she began working towards becoming a nurse, much to her mother’s approval. They hadn’t planned to have a child so soon, but Dolores’ fell pregnant in 1979 at the age of 22. Her son was born fit and healthy nine months later, and was named Simon. However, the unplanned pregnancy and their wildly differing work schedules only worked to drive a wedge between the young couple, and although her husband continued to claim that he loved her until the day he left her, he filed for divorce when their son was aged two, and moved away to ‘improve his prospects’. It wasn’t something that Dolores would ever be able to claim to understand, but she let him go, feeling that bringing up a child with one loving parent was better than with two who were always fighting, whether verbally or with silence. With support from her parents and some close friends, she managed to keep afloat with her bills until she could find a better-paying job, which she was lucky enough to do, and the couple who had been so kind to her when she had first discovered that she was a witch became regular babysitters for her young son while she worked long hours to make enough money to support herself. In 1986, while working a day shift, she got a telephone call that would give her the most horrifying news that a mother can receive – her son had been hit by a car, and was in critical condition. Sadly, she was unable to reach the hospital where he was being treated before he passed away, and it would be many years before she would cease faulting herself for not being there for her child. Following his death, she spiralled into a deep depression which caused her to lose her job, and she took to spending time in the seedier areas of the Wizarding parts of London, seeking ways to make herself forget, at least temporarily, the events for which she utterly blamed herself. It was there that she drew the attention of a vampire, and although she initially resisted his advances, her fragile emotional state made her easy prey to the charm and allure that such a creature can possess and they fell into a tumultuous relationship which would last little more than a year before she was persuaded into allowing him to turn her. Her mind had been twisted towards the belief that with the longer life becoming a vampire would give, she could do more towards making up for the guilt that the death of her son had placed on her. It was only when she woke and was able to take full stock of her situation that she realised what a grievous mistake she had made, and that living so long would also give her so much longer to lose herself in her grief. It was lucky, for the man who had turned her, that he made his escape before she came to after the change. For one of the few times in her life Dolores showed the full extent of her anger in the few hours following, destroying anything she could in the house he had left her in before she finally exhausted herself and realised with a sudden curling horror that she was hungry for human blood. She would never be able to track the other vampire down, but he would always be one person that she would never be able to forgive. As much as her parents had supported and loved her through her life, her new condition wasn’t something that she could ask them to understand. She moved away, to lower the risk of putting them in danger, and she bought a small house in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. For the next few months, she lived off her savings and what little money she could put together from doing odd jobs, made difficult by being a new-born vampire and therefore highly sensitive to sunlight. Eventually, she secured a job on the night shift at a residential home, though she never felt fulfilled in the position, the work not enough to distract her from her own mind, and she found herself wondering how difficult it might be to end her life painlessly. It was then, that she met a young boy by the name of Salvador Vantas. Although they lived on the same street, she didn’t know of his family, only seeing him occasionally as he walked to and from school, or when he passed by in the evenings while she was attempting to distract herself by tending to her garden. Though he wouldn’t know it at the time, that young boy would become her saviour, and the person who would make her feel as if she once more had a purpose in life. From brief greetings and short exchanges as he passed her home, to longer conversations, they built a positive rapport that slowly turned into a friendship. Dolores recognised, from the things that he would tell her – the strange visions he had, and the odd events that would happen around him – that Salvador was a wizard, but she knew that it was not her place to tell his family and instead took upon herself the role of a mentor towards the boy. It would be the thing that would save her from the heartache of losing her own child, as although she knew that she would never be able to replace Simon, giving a guiding hand to Salvador offered her a new sense of purpose, and she began to feel that perhaps the warped reasoning which had led to her turning had been correct, in a way – she could use her long life to better the lives of others, beginning with this confused and scared young wizard. With her motivation returning and a reignited wish to live, Dolores began seeking ways by which she could improve her situation. Her first act was to apply for a job at St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, where she gained employment as a nurse. Despite knowing how much of a risk it would be, and that her condition might be much more easily discovered in such a place, she was determined to make as much as she could out of her life before her age versus her physical appearance began to make things more difficult for her. She began working at St Mungo’s in 1990, aged 34, once again keeping herself to night shifts. Between feeling personally rewarded by the work that she was doing, and continuing to act as a supportive mentor for Salvador as he grew up and attended school, she regained a far happier demeanour and could even occasionally forget her vampirism entirely. As the years went by, her maternal instincts and her ability to care for all those who required it only increased, and she began to find herself attuned to the needs of her patients, as well as her friends, knowing without words when a kind gesture or a simple hug was warranted. However, she had to be careful not to get too close to people, knowing that those in the Magical world would be far more likely to be able to deduce that she was not quite like them, so despite her caring nature, she would always keep those she knew at arms’ length. It was something that she managed admirably, until 2004, when she made the acquaintance of an inquisitive Auror named Sybille Matteris. Unlike anyone she had come across before, Sybille was immediately suspicious of Dolores’ true nature, and seemed to make a point of getting under the nurse’s feet, seeking her attention and coming to the hospital for every small injury – perceived or not – that she gained while working. Despite how she demanded her attention, Dolores found her to be engaging and entertaining, but nothing could have prepared her for the day that Sybille would abruptly confront her about her condition. There was little she could do but confirm the Auror’s suspicions, knowing very well that there was next to no chance of hiding such a thing from her, but she wasn’t betrayed. Sybille would become a close friend and confidant, and eventually her lover, although their relationship was certainly not without its problems. Three years later, Sybille would be the one to warn her that people at St Mungo’s were beginning to become suspicious of her. It came as no surprise – she had been working there for seventeen years and changing hairstyles and subtle glamours could only do so much to hide the fact that she wasn’t aging. Rather than have herself discovered, Dolores resigned, and although she had the comfort of family to fall back upon – having been long since adopted as an official family member by Salvador, now married and with children of his own – she began to have concerns that her time had already run out, and she would begin to struggle with her condition and the limits it placed upon her in terms of employment. She had always kept herself free of any kind of vampire community, save for what she needed to control the Thirst, and wished to continue to do so, and so, when Sybille suggested to her that she look into applying for work at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, she didn’t even think twice. For the first time since her turning, Dolores was immediately up-front and honest about her vampirism as she sat nervously in front of Professor Dumbledore, awaiting his verdict about her suitability for a position in the school hospital wing. After being assured that she could control herself, had never attacked anyone and was no danger to the students, Dumbledore agreed to a trial period after which, if she proved what she had told him to be true, she would be allowed to stay in full employment. It was more than she could have ever expected, and she took it gladly, throwing herself into her work. She quickly formed bonds with her fellow staff and those students who came in under her care, and performed all of her duties with a focused diligence. Still, it came as a very welcome surprise when it was agreed that she would be kept on, and she felt she had finally found somewhere that she could belong, and also somewhere where she could watch over Salvador’s children, as she had watched over him when he was young. One year later, Sybille disappeared. Dolores had always known that her lover’s job was dangerous, but it had always been kept to the back of her mind. As much as she tried to find her, to find out anything about what might have happened to her, it was as if the Auror had simply disappeared. Eventually, Dolores gave up, thinking Sybille dead, and the loss of the one person who had treated her so entirely as a human being despite knowing of her true nature hit her hard. She didn’t show her mourning outwardly, not wanting to upset those around her, or draw them into what she viewed as the more private part of her life. Imagine her shock and delight, then, when two years after this, Sybille arrived at Hogwarts – a little worse for wear – to be a professor. Naturally, Dolores was overjoyed to see her, unable to hold any hatred against the woman who, although she no longer loved as she had, still cared deeply for. It has been four years since the beginning of her employment at Hogwarts, and she has not once thought of leaving her position. As of yet, only a select number of the staff know of her condition, and she has not seen it necessary to inform everyone of it, knowing the attitudes that some have towards vampires – she would not wish for someone to refuse to come to her for urgent treatment simply through not trusting her because of what she is. Relationships Salvador Vantas Fill in the blanks Cephas Captor Fill in the blanks Sybille Matteris Fill in the blanks Murdoc Donoghue Fill in the blanks Philip Coulson Fill in the blanks Kankri Vantas Fill in the blanks Bro Strider Fill in the blanks Dirk Strider Fill in the blanks Eridan Ampora Fill in the blanks Sollux Captor Fill in the blanks Marceline Abadeer Fill in the blanks Marshall Lee Fill in the blanks "Mamma" Gkika Jaeger Fill in the blanks Rhys Rhydderch Fill in the blanks Kurloz Makara Fill in the blanks Trivia Fill in the blanks External Links Character Journal